Financial Stability and Development Committee


The Financial Stability and Development Committee is a Chinese financial regulatory body under the State Council.

History

In August 2013, China indicated that it would create a new government body to coordinate financial regulation. The announcement was made amidst a wide variety of regulatory reforms as government concern about the corporate debt bubble grew in China. Chinese Communist Party general secretary Xi Jinping at the July 2017 National Financial Work Conference gave a speech describing the Financial Stability and Development Committee, by name, stating that its purpose would be to “strengthen financial regulatory coordination and supplement regulatory shortcomings” and “strengthen the People's Bank of China’s macroprudential regulation and systemic risk prevention role, strengthen the regulatory role of financial regulatory departments, and ensure the safe and stable development of the Chinese financial sector.” The Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the State Council approved its creation in November 2017. Vice Premier Ma Kai was appointed the inaugural chairman. After the inaugural meeting held in November 2017, Chinese state media identified the FSDC as a critical step to "safeguard financial security and prevent financial risk."
The FSDC held its first meeting in November 2017. The New York Times opined that the Commission "seemed more a minnow than a whale" as it fell far short of proposals to combine the People's Bank of China with existing regulatory agencies to create a "super-regulator." In contrast, the FSDC was assigned a small physical office in the PBOC. The Times noted that Vice Premier Ma was a "lame duck," but expressed hope that the commission would be given more power in the future. It was not until July 2018 that the government announced the full membership of the FSDC, while also indicating that Party Politburo member and Vice Premier Liu He was succeeding Ma as Commission Chair.
As part of the government response to the COVID-19 pandemic in mainland China, the FSDC met repeatedly; while the Commission announced its 14th meeting in early January 2020, it disclosed that it held its 25th meeting on 7 April. This reflected deep worry by national leadership about the economic downturn and a policy shift from managing risk from accumulated debt to expanding availability to credit to avoid bankruptcies and job losses.

Membership

The membership of the FSDC, as of 2018, was: